Weekly Forecast October 22: Sun Enters Scorpio, Venus Enters Libra

What is transformation? We talk about it a lot, but what does it mean to transform? How does it happen?

Many of us will have transformational experiences in the next few weeks as we move deeper into the realm of Scorpio, the sign of death, transformation, and rebirth. Saturn entered Scorpio on October 5 for the first time in nearly 30 years, and for the first time in more than 230 years is in mutual reception with Pluto, the ruler of Scorpio in modern Western astrology. When the Sun enters Scorpio on Monday, the individual and collective transformation process intensifies (after all, what is the collective but a “collection” of individuals?).

As part of the research for my documentary, I’ve been familiarizing myself with the work of Stan Grof, a psychiatrist best known for his experiments with LSD in the 1970s, when medical use was legal. A friend lent me Grof’s latest book, When the Impossible Happens: Adventures in Non-Ordinary Realities. It’s the first time I’ve read accounts of Grof’s own sessions with LSD. In some of these sessions, he had past-life memories, and in some cases, these memories triggered deep healing in his personal relationships. His accounts validated my own experiences, which I had without the use of psychedelics.

In fact, in my astrology work, I’ve observed that an increasing number of people are having such memories, which I prefer to call “other lives,” because I believe they aren’t happening in chronological succession according to human perception of time. Grof came to the same conclusion – and he’s a Ph.D. psychiatrist who never believed in past lives. Incidentally, as he ventured further into non-ordinary states of consciousness, he also came to accept the validity of astrology.

In his work, Grof observed time and again the transformation that occurred in patients as a result of entering what he calls the “holotropic state of consciousness” – a state of mind in which we can heal past wounds, whether from early childhood, the birth process itself, or events prior to birth in this incarnation. While in this state, some patients had other-life experiences that explained fears and anxieties that previously had no name and no known source. Some of them also discovered karmic relationships that helped explain their current relationship difficulties. Once LSD was outlawed, he worked with breathing techniques to achieve an altered state of consciousness. Of course there are other ways to do it, too, which he readily acknowledges.

Once Grof began working with LSD, it didn’t take long for him to realize that conventional “modern” psychiatry and psychology was inadequate. It couldn’t address spiritual experiences, and it completely ignored human consciousness. In the mid-60s – right around the time of the Uranus-Pluto conjunction – Grof got together with some colleagues and laid the foundation for transpersonal psychology. It’s still not entirely in the mainstream, but with Uranus and Pluto now in a square, it’s making inroads in one form or another and is the way of the future for psychology. The profession is being transformed, and that means people who seek therapy for mental health issues also have an increased chance of being transformed.

In the meantime, though, many people are going through spontaneous transformation, and from what I’m seeing, a lot of it is related to a growing awareness of other lives – in particular, of relationships that exist beyond this incarnation. Often, meeting another person with whom one has karmic ties is the trigger for those memories. I don’t believe it’s any coincidence that the increase in the number of people having these experiences is happening now. This is quite possibly the Apocalypse – not doom and destruction, but a lifting of the veil to higher consciousness and the resulting transformation of society that by definition must happen when enough people understand that the energy patterns underlying the material world are inextricably linked to physical reality.

Anyone who has had Pluto transit their Ascendant has a good idea of what transformation is and how it works. It’s usually a slow process, even if a sudden event triggers it, and that’s good. For transformation to take place, a part of us must die, and that part usually is the ego – the structures that your mind has developed to survive in your environment and circumstances. Breaking down isn’t pretty. For some people, it might even mean a literal mental breakdown that has to occur before their body/mind can be reassembled in wholeness. Sometimes, other-life memories or sudden realizations can be so foreign to what they “know” that the breakdown happens all by itself. That said, with Saturn in Scorpio and Pluto in Capricorn, it’s time to take responsibility for our healing and transformation.

The human race as a whole is going through a major change, and we’re seeing it as breakdowns in whole societies. These changes are well under way, so whether we’ll see more of them during this intensive Scorpio period or whether more people will just become aware of what’s happening, I can’t say – maybe some of both.

Part of what makes transformation so hard is that it usually requires going back to the source of a wound. That in itself has been hard, because until we recognize that some wounds are in our energy field and may have been imprinted before our birth in this incarnation, we can’t address the source, even if we want to. Past-life regression therapy has been around for a while, and although there weren’t a lot of controls in the early days, the field is attempting to police itself and weed out unqualified and unethical practitioners.

Looking at this week, the Sun enters Scorpio at 8:14 p.m. EDT on Monday, and immediately trines Neptune on Tuesday and conjoins Saturn on Thursday. Sun-Saturn aspects can be intimidating, but I see this three-way aspect between the Sun and Saturn in Scorpio and Neptune in Pisces as a huge opening for taking responsibility for your own transformation. With Neptune in Pisces, we don’t even need the LSD but can go into altered states through meditation and occult practices such as working with the Tarot. Of course, sex is always an avenue, too, as long as you’re aware of what you’re doing. As with all things Scorpio, the portal is your own fear. What are you most afraid of? And how is that fear self-limiting? Do you even know? I’d suggest that if you’re in therapy already, you might want to do some extra work with your therapist. If you’re not in therapy but think you could benefit, this is a great time to do the heavy lifting. As an added bonus (um, right) there’s a trine from the Sun to Chiron on Saturday. I know, opening an old wound may be incredibly uncomfortable, but the pain is temporary, and with Saturn in Scorpio, we can bite the bullet.

Also on Thursday, Mercury in Scorpio sextiles Venus in Virgo – a great time to get to the bottom of issues in your love life. Do take some care in how you approach the subject. Finding fault or being overly critical isn’t the way to get heard. Better still, wait a couple of days, until Venus enters her own sign of Libra. This is much better energy for give-and-take, compromise, and accommodation. Just don’t be so willing to avoid conflict at any cost that you don’t say what you’ve got to say.

Ten minutes before Venus enters Libra on Sunday, Mars in Sagittarius opposes Jupiter in Gemini. This is about big ideas and adventurous thinking, to hell with the details for now. It’s time for back-of-the-envelope calculations and taking phone numbers to get together for further discussion.

Speaking of big ideas, if you’d like to know more about Stan Grof’s work, he has a substantial article archive on his website.

Wow, Pat, this is helpful– thanks! I’ve been using Tarot a lot in recent months and noticed an incredible uptick in clear (to me) readings. Previously, I would get clear readings only occasionally. Nowadays, the cards point right to the core of the matter, with almost no equivocation, especially when I use the Celtic Cross layout. And I have less need to look up card meanings now. In other areas, I’ve been thinking about each person I interact with at work, at home, or in other ways that are significant and wondering just how many of them are accidental. For example, each time I get a new renter, it’s someone who needs what my SO and I are knowledgeable in: substance abuse/long-term sobriety, and mental health services, respectively. It’s uncanny.

Anyway… It’s been a difficult year and I kinda dread Saturn in Scorpio turning up some lesson I overlooked or some detail I discounted as irrelevant (plus I’m turning 40).

{{{JOE}}} You won’t believe this (OK, maybe you will) but I was thinking about you while I was writing and had a feeling you’d comment. :-)

I share your experience with the Tarot and was going to mention it, but the post was already getting long. I started working with the Tarot in the early 90s and have gone through a few periods where readings didn’t make any sense at all. When the ability “came back,” it was way stronger. I read somewhere that when we’re going through a transformation, our psychic abilities can be temporarily disabled — not unlike a snake being temporarily blind while shedding its skin. In fact, the snake is one of the symbols of Scorpio precisely because of the cyclical shedding of its skin.

Inner transformations can happen without any awareness that it’s happening. Then one day, you wake up and notice that something has changed. And it may be something as subtle as a difference in your ability to read cards or increased synchronicities. It doesn’t surprise me, in your case, given what you’ve been through. You faced a huge fear and came through the other side.

For those of us with strong Scorpio/Pluto in our charts, transformation is a lifelong theme. So yes, there likely will be more transformational periods in your life, with even more consolidation of your personal power and development of the tools you need to fulfill your purpose in this incarnation. In this time of great awakening, many people are releasing old karma as well. In that case, it may be a matter of a short period of emotional pain, followed by a feeling that a great burden has been lifted.

Thank you so much for sharing your experience and filling in some info I left out.

Now that is interesting, and I’m glad I mentioned it. Of course, it only encourages me to keep doing readings which is all to the good. In desperation, I turned to the cards to try to see what’s behind a tremendous delay in a renovation project at home that has literally taken all year to get going, and we’re still waiting. I thought Mars rx Virgo was the culprit, but it’s bigger than that, apparently. The positives, such as they are, Include a return to Tarot, and a heroic test of my primary relationship (Saturn in Libra, doncha know), but this Scorpio is galled about being blocked from seeing what’s under the surface! Lots of SN stuff being activated, too, I suppose.

Interesting post. I’d like to read more about Stan Grof’s work. Past life memories have fascinated me for a few years now, and I’d be curious to know how he experienced them.
A few years ago, around the same time that I started studying astrology, a friend of mine told me that he knew a woman who was doing past-life regression sessions for free until she became officially certified. I was a total skeptic at the time, as I had been about astrology. But, I tried it anyway. And it forever changed the way that I view the concept of “time”, and human consciousness in general. Through that session I became aware that certain memories I associated with the childhood of *this* life, were possibly from other lives. The experience was very illuminating and completely unpredictable.

Joe, I’m convinced that working with the Tarot symbols is one way of increasing conscious awareness. It has little to do with learning mythology and memorizing the correspondences — although that certainly is a worthy endeavor. A systematic approach to working with the Tarot appears to alter patterns in the brain, possibly by creating new neural pathways. You’ve had a lot of experience with that, so this shouldn’t come as a big surprise to you. Once those pathways are created, you don’t need to think so much about the interpretations. For me, it was like creating a new filing system in my brain. This is not overnight work, but takes many years and persistence.

In any case, I’m really glad to hear you’re back to working with the cards. Thanks again for sharing your valuable experience.

Atinker, thanks for taking the time to leave a thoughtful comment. Your experience seems to mirror Grof’s and, actually, my own. It’s one thing to be open to radical new ideas, but quite another to swallow this seemingly far-out stuff hook, line, and sinker. Put another way, a healthy dose of skepticism is good.

Under the influence of LSD, Grof experienced very vivid past life memories, with specific people, places, circumstances, etc. He describes a couple of these in the book I cite in my post. The book didn’t get great reviews; sounds like people already familiar with his work were expecting something different. But for anyone who hasn’t read his work, this is a good introduction. He talks not only about his own past-life memories, but also those of clients he was working with at the time. Once LSD was declared illegal, he replaced it with breathing techniques to produce a state of heightened awareness. However, it seems to me that more people are having these memories spontaneously, without the need for mind-altering substances or exotic techniques. For many people, the trigger is meeting someone with a karmic connection. I’ve lost count of how many clients have come to me with this issue.